Younicos Supplying Battery Storage For Austin Energy Pilot

Energy storage company Younicos has signed an agreement to deliver a megawatt-scale battery storage system to Texas-based utility Austin Energy. The project is part of a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-funded initiative known as the Sustainable and Holistic Integration of Energy Storage and Solar PV (SHINES) project.

Younicos says it will collaborate with the project’s prime contractor, Doosan GridTech, to install the 1.75 MW/3.2 MWh system using the company’s Y.Cube systems. They will be managed by Younicos’s Y.Q software platform, communicating with the Doosan GridTech Intelligent Controller using the MESA (Modular Energy Storage Architecture) open standard. The seven Y.Cubes and Y.Converters represent Younicos’ largest Y.Cube deployment in the U.S. to date.

Younicos says the Y.Cube systems will provide storage capabilities as part of a distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) that will maintain grid reliability while also enabling energy loads to be delivered at a low cost with high penetration levels of distributed solar PV generation. The platform, called DG-DERO, also provided by Doosan GridTech, will use multiple advanced control methodologies that will be demonstrated and evaluated using a fleet of diverse DER assets deployed at various locations among Austin Energy’s customers.

In addition to optimizing battery performance in combination with solar PV, a key requirement of the project is compliance with strict safety standards. The battery system will be located in a neighborhood in East Austin, Texas, coexisting near both residential and commercial buildings.

“The SHINES project is the perfect showcase for an alternative, distributed energy system with resources like energy storage providing resiliency and security,” says Stephen L. Prince, CEO of Younicos. “We’re very pleased to partner with Austin Energy and Doosan GridTech on this innovative project.”

“Integrating energy storage with solar is becoming essential as we achieve our utility’s goal of 55 percent renewable energy by 2025,” says Karl Popham, Austin SHINES principal investigator and manager of emerging technologies at Austin Energy. “The Austin SHINES program is more than a technical pilot; it is phase one of a larger rollout to maximize the value of distributed energy resources for our customers and the utility. Ultimately, it’s about clean energy being even more affordable and reliable.”

Daejin Choi, CEO of Doosan GridTech, comments, “We are pleased to be working with Younicos on this breakthrough project. The Modular Energy Storage Architecture (MESA) open standard provides the software architecture that allows us each to bring our innovation to Austin Energy without a lot of custom engineering to fit the pieces together. Austin preserves choice in their system moving forward and we each get to focus on our core competencies.”